In early March, 2007, as Google was expanding fast and furiously, one of its recruiters from the "Google.com Engineering" group made a career-ending mistake: She cold-contacted an Apple engineer by email, violating the secret and illegal non-solicitation compact that her boss, Eric Schmidt, had agreed with Apple's Steve Jobs.

What happened next is just one of many specific examples of how people's lives were impacted by the Techtopus wage-theft cartel that was taken down by the Department of Justice antitrust division, and is currently being litigated in a landmark class action lawsuit.

This story sent shivers down my spine. What a bunch of horrible, unethical scumbags. Sadly, their criminal behaviour won't really have any meaningful consequences. These people reside above the law.

here's nothing unethical in denying people jobs even if their skills and all fulfill any requirements needed to do the job just in order to be able to keep their wages low? Are you seriously asking that?

No. Nothing unethical. Those companies don't owe anyone a position. Nor do those who can fill it owe those companies anything. It was a non-violent, non-fraudulent. At best you can try to argue that the employees were lied to by their firms... but that's between the company, the employee, and their contracts.

You can't have it both ways. Unions regularly use government to force businesses to fix wages and artificially raise costs to customers via licencing laws. They make it hard to be fired but want to be able to quit at any time.

Buyers want lower prices, sellers want higher. Labor is no different. The company wants lower wages and costs and workers higher wages. Them agreeing to no go after one another's employees has nothing to do with the industry as a whole. Those people are free not to take those wages and push up labor prices. At least they have that option. Something union laws forbid.